It is said that the cougar has the largest range of any wild animal living on land in North and South America. Its distribution extends from the Yukon to Chile. The cougar is an exceptional predator that will track and attack a wide variety of prey. Principle food sources include deer, elk, moose as well as cattle and horses. It has also been known to hunt insects and rodents. This cat prefers habitats with dense underbrush and rocky areas for stalking, but can also live in open areas.
Closer to home, sightings of the large cats have pockmarked Northern Manitoba. Since 1996, there have been several cougars seen, specifically around Thompson, The Pas, and Flin Flon, but also as far north as Stephens Lake on the Nelson River. Not to be outdone, several sightings have also been made in the Snow Lake area of late.
Snow Lake's Malcolm Garratt says that he recently had a pretty scary experience when he encountered a big cat. Garratt, who is a motorcycle enthusiast, had driven his bike to Ponton on Aug. 30, gassed up and was on the return trip, 64 kilometres from Snow Lake, when he had his incident. "Something came out to the edge of the road," said Garratt still shook up from the event. "At first I thought it was a man walking down the road. It turned broadside, then I could see it, and I thought then it was a cat. I figured, well, it's gotta be a Lynx. It got closer and closer to me coming down the centre of my oncoming lane and I'm going 100 kph per hour in the centre of the other one. Once it got a little closer, I could see it was way too big for a Lynx. I was probably 50 yards from it and it just came for me just like a bullet tried to take me off the bike. I deked over to the side and must have put it off stride some. But when I looked down towards my knee, his head was right there and there was no doubt in the world it was a Cougar."
Garratt said that once past the large cat, he looked in his rear-view mirror and it was chasing behind him. He says that he concentrated on getting away from it and he didn't think it chased him very long. Asked if he thought the cat mistook him for a deer, Garratt says that he was honking his horn and that his bike has a loud horn and bright lights.
"The only thing that would make me think, that maybe it did think I was that (a deer) was I did have a black and brown leather jacket on, but with that and a black helmet and visor on, I don't see how it could have misjudged me for a deer," he said.
Garratt says that he was shaking for a couple of days after the encounter, but as soon as he got to town, he phoned the police (because he couldn't get hold of anyone at Conservation Manitoba). They got hold of Conservation and he eventually talked to one of them on a radio. "They didn't phone me back, so I went and saw them," Garratt said. "The one guy that is supposedly looking after the case said he'd been out there and they tried calling and baiting and hadn't seen anything. But he said they had reports the Saturday and Sunday after that there was a grey wolf up and down the road there in the same area. And this Cougar was grey too so then they're thinking, well, you saw the wolf. But I know what I saw, when its head was that close. I've been around wildlife all my life and I know the difference between a wolf and a cat."
Garratt said that since the incident he has done some web research and has found that a grey Cougar is not uncommon, particularly an older cat.
Further to this, another Snow Lake man, Richard Jones has been hanging trail cameras about 10 kilometres from Snow Lake and caught an interesting animal on film. However, it is just a partial photo of the head and shoulders of the specimen. "Looking at the shoulder humps and ears ... they're different than a wolf/coyote or bear, definitely not a Lynx," Jones wrote in an e-mail that accompanied the photo he took. He says that the majority of the people he's showed it to think it's a cougar.
